This paper looks at the process of agricultural innovation and the contribution agricultural research can make. To be able to analyse the process of agricultural innovation, three dimensions are distinguished: 1) opportunity assessment to identify ‘entry points for change’, defined drawing on the expertise and experience of many actors; 2) experimentation under realistic circumstances, leading to ‘tested and tried promising new practices’; and 3) bringing into routine use for ‘impact at scale’, which invariably incurs in further adaptation to fit a diversity of ‘local realities’.
In-depth analysis of the role and capacity development needs of farmers organization in innovation processes, using the evidence from a number of case studies from contemporary SSA agriculture. Experiences indicate that Farmers’organizations (FOs) can play an important role in sharing knowledge-for-innovation by initiating multi-actor platforms for interactive learning and by implementing joint activity programmes (including use of the media) with extension services on a cost-sharing basis.
This report provides a synthesis of all findings and information generated through a “stocktaking” process that involved a desk study of Prolinnova documents and evaluation reports, a questionnaire to 40 staff members of international organizations in agricultural research and development (ARD), self-assessment by the Country Platforms (CPs) and backstopping visits to five CPs. In 2014, the Prolinnova network saw a need to re-strategise in a changing context, and started this process by reviewing the activities it had undertaken and assessing its own functioning.
The Commission on Sustainable Agriculture Intensification (CoSAI) and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) jointly commissioned a gap study to determine how far away innovation investment is from helping agri-food systems achieve zero hunger goals and the Paris Agreement while reducing impacts on water resources in the Global South. The results show that the world can come much closer with some well-placed investments.
Considering the new opportunities that ICT innovations bring to improve performance of financial and extension services, this study looks at the potential contribution of financial and extension services to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The approach used extends the standard Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model to include longer-term management goals and find a solution that balances the efficient use of innovation investments and the achievement of policy goals, making this approach well suited for the analysis of the SDGs.
Agriculture is crucial for the livelihood of millions of people worldwide and is one of the main drivers of deforestation, biodiversity loss and resource degradation. The contribution of agriculture to these environmental problems has been exacerbated by subsidies, which constitute the dominant public policy to support farmers. At the same time, other economic instruments introducing more sustainable land-use practices and incentivizing better environmental and social outcomes are already being applied worldwide.
The study was designed to answer the following three key questions:
(1) What types of investment instruments have been tested to support innovation in agri-food systems in the Global South, and how can these be categorized into a working typology?
(2) What is the evidence on how well different instruments have supported SAI's multiple objectives (e.g. social equality and environmental) at scale and what contextual and design factors affect their success or failure in achieving these objectives (e.g. type of value chain, who participates)?
What are the patterns of funding in agricultural innovation for the Global South1 ? Who are the key funders in this innovation and who are the key recipients? How doesthis funding split between various topics and value chains? What proportion of these funds support Sustainable Agricultural Intensification (SAI)? And how is SAI innovation funding split across different parts of the agriculture sector funding and innovation canvas?
Increasing investment and spending in agricultural innovation is not enough to meet Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets of ending poverty and hunger because the effectiveness of investments in low- and middle-income (LMI) countries is affected by the low quality of infrastructure and services provided, and by different norms and practices that create a considerable gap between financing known technical solutions and achieving the outcomes called for in the SDGs.
Cities are highly visible centers of mass consumption of food and vast excretion of waste; they are less often associated with the production of food. Yet closer observation of cities in the Global South reveals that they are also locations of food production. This report describes the major challenges affecting crop cultivation and animal raising as well as food consumption in and around cities, where many households are poorly fed, negatively affected by unsustainable urbanization processes, and threatened with a warming and disease-prone world.